Announcer carefully studying what he can say about female gymnasts without seeming like a total pervert

BEIJING, CHINA — Announcing for the Olympics requires a lot of preparation, as most sports fans know. Stories of Bob Costas and other announcers preparing for years in anticipation of announcing the events are well publicized, as the sportscasters seek to learn the nuanced history of both the Olympics and the host nation in order to provide the viewing public with the most robust experience possible in their Olympic viewing.

John Richardson has taken this lesson to heart.

Richardson, 44, is going to be announcing the women’s gymnastics events for NBC, and he recently told SSNN that he’s spent months studying extremely hard in anticipation of his moment in the Olympic spotlight.

“Yeah, I’ve spent a long time studying,” Richardson told SSNN. “See, women’s gymnastics is tough, because the girls are really young. So you have to be a little bit careful with how you express some things. You want to humanize it, you know, but you also don’t want people to misinterpret things that you’re saying. So you’ve got to be pretty judicious with your word choice. It takes practice.”

When pressed for an example, Richardson was happy to comply.

“See, check it out – let’s say you’re watching a 16-year old girl do a floor routine,” he said. “It’s perfectly fine to describe her as ‘delightful,’ or ‘cute as a button.’ People like that. But you start to get in trouble if you say something like, ‘She’s the type of girl that you’d like to see naked in the backseat of your car, wearing pigtails.’ See the difference?”

Richardson said that it’s understandably difficult for an amateur to understand the nuances of announcing, and admits that he himself has made some mistakes in the past.

For example, he says that at a recent World Championships event, he referred to a 17-year-old gymnast as “the type of girl you’d want to have as a daughter.”

“That was fine, actually,” Richardson explained. “But then I went on to say that if she wasn’t your daughter, you’d at least like her as your kid’s babysitter, where you could give her a ride home late at night when it was really dark outside. And all of a sudden people start to freak out.

“It’s so quick… It’s like all of a sudden, you go from things going perfectly fine to total bedlam. They pulled me off the air so fast that I didn’t even have time to read my essay about how the pommel horse should be used in women’s gymnastics as well.”

Richardson is nevertheless excited about his time in Beijing.

“I think it’s going to be great,” he said. “I’ve got some great material prepared in advance; for example, I know that one girl from Russia has a teddy bear collection of more than 1,000 bears, 20 of which she brought to Beijing with her. I also have a whole thing about this one other 15-year-old girl from Romania, who I think would look really cute in a pleated skirt with pigtails and knee-high socks, so I did a whole little photoshop thing of her that I think is gonna really bring the house down.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!